Team-BHP - Honda Civic : Maintenance, Service Costs and Must dos

Quote:

Originally Posted by sgiitk (Post 2651273)

@dot; Where do you get low Octane.

Well, I have no beliefs left in petrol bunks other than Shell.

But thats not why I used this additive. This was expected to clean off injectors, valve seat and upper cylinder areas. Lucas oil is mostly mineral oil with surfactants, I think. After using the additive, the engine response was better. To test if this was subjective, I stopped using it for two tankfuls and checked the difference. Then added it again. Definitely there is an improvement.

As for injector cleaning our petrol (till BSII) our refineries were using an older refining process which led to the gumming problem. At that point additives or Premium (if available) were nearly mandatory.

I used Premium until I bought my Civic (was the first BSIV Civic registered in Kanpur). Once we went BSIV. The sarkari petrol had to be BSIII, so unless you are getting 'special' additives like Naptha you should be Ok on the Octane front. Honda specifically advised against Premium. So stopped it in the Santro as well. Just System G every few tankfuls. I will now try out System G in my Civic and give the feedback.

Quote:

Originally Posted by swarooppatil (Post 2650820)

I got myself the Honda Assure just to avoid the hassles last year and yes it proved very useful. Renewed with the same one this year. Did you also check about the zero depreciation policy. You pay a premium over the normal one but end up paying a lot less in case of a crash (I paid only Rs.1400 once when a right front fender, front bumper, right side orvm assembly and right front tyre were replaced, when my stationary car was banged by a truck). BTW where are you taking the policy from if its a Honda dealership you could try getting a better deal in terms of freebies.

Thanks Swaroop.

I'll check about the zero depreciation as well. My policy is from Apex Honda. I tried for other freebies with no luck. I am also inclined towards Honda Assure in case bad luck strikes.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mayankjha1806 (Post 2652834)

More importantly how are the lights now their throw especially on highway? Are they HID's or Xenons? How much was the damage to Vitamin M? Also is doing it as simple as replacing bulbs? is it a DIY?

Looks good on Civic.

On Highway FX-R are way too good, it lits of the whole 6 lane highway very well. Been driving it for a while on highways, I never had a chance to put my Highbeams on, Coz the low beam throw is good & sufficient for my driving.
I don't have a good pic of FX-R on highway, but will upload the same after sometime.

These are HID's.

Mayank,
All I can say is money well spent. (The Retrofit Source online: headlight upgrades for all applications )
Though I had to simply do it twice, coz the H1 Mini Morimotos were not producing the desired output, I replaced them with FX-R 1.1 (after using them for a month)
Though morimoto's go in directly to the Headlamps reflectors but we still had to work on it for 2 days to get a desired output as well as OEM finish.
FX-R was pain, cutting the reflectors + insulating+ adjusting the cutoff beam. This also took 2 days for us.
H1 mini can be done as DIY, but on a personal note it's better to get help from an experienced person when retrofitting the projectors on reflectors (which involves cutting/slicing + adjusting the beam)

More info n pics can be found here
http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/modifi...ml#post2652696

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ace F355 (Post 2652810)

Brilliant pics, sushrutha! How is the car doing othervise?

Thanks ACE,
Car is doing brilliant too.
Replaced tyres (2 at back) + replaced the Brake pads & Brake rotors & Tie rod ends + ball joints+ stablizer bar links. I replaced all these as a preventive measure.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dot (Post 2653432)

^^ Lovely pictures there, Sushrutha. Loved it.

One a different note, the low beam leveler and the "headlight on" warning chime does not seem to be working in my car. I have a feeling some fuse must have blown, any idea which one?

Thanks dot.

My Civic CD player has a different issue.
The lights of the buttons are not coming up when I put the park lights on.
Every other thing works fine (HU Display + CD player,Radio etc). AC buttons are lit, but not the HU buttons are illuminated.
Same with select/Reset button for adjusting the Odomoter, Adjusting the Light Illumination button(next to Select/reset button) is illuminated.
Took it to Service @ Honda, they don't have a clue about it.

As per Honda, the Fuse is not an issue here.

I have put the same post in this thread too
http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/ask-gu...ml#post2653103

Quote:

Originally Posted by sgiitk (Post 2655501)

@susruhta; I saw the site. It was not clear that the H11 replacement does not require the fog lights to be replaced. The site is very impressive.

One can put the HID's in the stock reflector/fog lamps, but i'm sure most of our headlamps reflectors are not suited for direct HID's to fit in which MIGHT produce horrible glare(Heard an exception for CRUZE Headlamp reflectors).
In BLR, I have seen many Innova,I20,Accord which have been fitted with HID's in foglamps producing good Lumens on the road, with too much of glare for the opposite vehicle. So the same might hold good for Civic fog lamps too.
I have BLAZER Projector foglamps(which were sourced from the same website) in my CIVIC which are having 880 halogen bulbs in them. Sadly one of the bulb went for a toss, it's hard to source 880 bulbs here.
I'm getting the HID's for these Blazers within this week. I'm putting 4300K 880 Hid bulbs in them, I can comment on it once I install the HID's.
All I can say about blazer as of now is they are VFM fog lamps($45).
I had to cut the fog lamp vents to get this Fixed.
In the website You can see some examples of the cars OEM foglamps which have been fitted with Blazer projectors (but this needs cutting of blazer clamps/holders, by the way they are heavy duty fogs with thick metal)

Reached a Milestone with 1,00,000 kms, in 4 years and 8 months.

Though the average running comes to 59 kms per day, most of the days it is parked unused with the body-cover on.

The car is used mainly for long highway runs of around eight hours and more at one-time. More than 99% of those was driven by me, the rest was when my close-friends drove it with me also in the car, in other words, the car was never taken out of my sight (except during services!).

The details of all my services/experiences after 30K/August-2008 are posted here in Team-Bhp.

The car is 100% stock with no modifications whatsoever to the original factory fittings.
I have never even considered sun-film since it entails removing the door-panels, which might then start rattling at some point in the future.
Longevity is my goal and I plan to hold this car for at-least 10 years with maybe more than 2+ lakh kms on the odo (for comparison my previous car was the first-gen Honda-City 1.5 which I owned for 8 years and 1.26 lakh kms with all sorts of modifications).
I have never faced many problems reported here by others on Team-Bhp.

I take care to reduce the wear & tear to the minimum (see attached photos for any!).
After long drives I pressure-wash with Bosh-Aquatak and cover her up.
And hypermiling also helps (see my FE report below).
(The pedal-area is dirty in the photo since I had just now returned after a 1,000 kms drive and yet to clean it).

I always fill full-tank and maintain meticulous records of my fuelling in a spreadsheet.

Overall FE: 12.38 kmpl (1,00,597 kms with 8,125 litres).
(Overall FE is low since in the first two years I did not hypermile).

Best short-term FE: 17.7 kmpl (660 kms with 37 litres).
The errors in the full-tank method gets accurate over the long-term so if anyone doubts this, see the next record).

Best long-term FE: 14.0 kmpl for a continous 10,711 kms with 765 litres :thumbs up.

So do I always drive like an old man, no! I do hit the rev-limiter regularly and get aggressive at times :D. For example the Bangalore drive I did last month gave me only 11.7 kmpl over 1,265 kms. FE inside the city was less than 9.5 kmpl (http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/street...ml#post2625181).

Want to wait a few weeks before going for my 1 lakh kms routine service and will post details here.

P.S
The mobile (in the photo) is a HTC-Desire which I use extensively for navigation with Google-Maps.